Both audiences were up there in terms of age, mostly old enough to have grandchildren, and overwhelmingly caucasian, maybe 90 percent, if you can actually guess those things by looking.

The Pepsi Center folks drank more alcohol, and didn’t turn off their phones, and the orchestra attendees were way better-dressed and polite enough not to shout “We love you Stevie Nicks” while the singer was actually trying to perform. But the two sets shared one key element: enthusiasm. The ovations were made standing in both houses and that basic human need to be sated by very familiar music — whether guitar-driven or violin-driven — was never in doubt.

The Colorado projects mark the first time Colorado is receiving funding from ArtPlace, a collaboration of 13 national foundations and six banks that has “invested” $42.1 million through 134 grants across the U.S. The Colorado winners were chosen from among more than 1,200 applications.

Starting next season, Lawrence Golan will become the orchestra’s fifth music director since it began performing in 1948.

He replaces Adam Flatt, who held the post from 2010 through the current performance year. Flatt, also the music director for the Colorado Ballet, will continue as a guest conductor with the DPO, starting with its holiday concert in December.

Golan is known to local audiences as conductor of the University of Denver’s Lamont Symphony Orchestra and Opera Theatre where he has worked for 12 years.

It would be generous to say that a lot of people don’t like the $110 million expansion with its pointy ends and slanted exhibition walls. Libeskind is revered, but this isn’t widely considered one of his masterpieces. The building can feel distant, illogical and inconvenient.

So, it’s not all that surprising that this time around, when it comes to constructing a new administration building, DAM isn’t asking for any input from the general public or playing up the addition of a new piece of architecture in the Museum District. The museum announced the building officially Thursday with ground set to break any day now. The design is complete. Done, hope you like it.

One bonehead’s opinion about art. Express yours more constructively online. Photo by John Leyba/The Denver Post

OK, I’m going public here. I’ve got lots of opinions about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to Denver’s art scene and it’s time to share.

You’ll get your chance. Especially if you take a few minutes to fill out the survey the city’s Arts & Venue’s department has popped on its website as it prepares Denver’s next big cultural plan.

Cultural plans sound a little boring. I get that. But they matter. How the various government agencies go about handing out cash for art (SCFD: love it or hate it?), putting up public works (angry blue horse: love it or hate it?), educating students (violin lessons for the little kiddies: seriously, who could hate that?) makes or breaks us as a community and defines how the world views our little burg.

The pavilion in Ruby Hill Park. Next comes an amphitheater. Photo by Lindsay Pierce, YourHub.

Denver’s Ruby Hill Park will get a new amphitheater that could host as many as 50 free concerts and other events each year.

Officials from the city of Denver, along with the nonprofit Levitt Pavilions, are expected to officially unveil the project this afternoon. Levitt Pavilions is a foundation, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., that contributes money toward performance venues across the country.

Typically, Levitt partners with a municipality and that is the case in Denver where the foundation has pledged $1.2 million to the project over five years. The city will contribute $2 million from funds left over from the Better Denver Bonds that voters approved in 2007.

The city has a $57 million pot of money remaining from the Better Denver initiative. The cash was earmarked for a renovation to Boettcher Concert Hall, but that project fell through when the Colorado Symphony Orchestra failed to come up with the matching funds it promised for the redo.

The Mark Morris Dance Group kicks off the Newman Center Presents series Sept. 21-22, 2013. Photo by Marc Royce, from the center.

The Newman Center Presents season is out for 2013-14 and, as usual, it’s intriguing. The center is a valuable asset in Denver, bringing in the kind of performers no one else does.

Denver desparately needs dance and Newman’s got it, including a return of the Trey McIntyre Project, one of the West’s more innovative troupes. The season also includes a few interesting pairings: jazz pianist Chick Corea and and bluegrass banjo player Bela Fleck, flamenco guitartist Paco Peña and classical guitarist Eliot Fisk.

You don’t get this stuff anywhere else folks.

I’ll just give you the list here, because that’s what matters. I put a little smiley face after my personal picks.

They’re going for $75 each and the prize is serious, a 2013 Prius Persona (taxes paid), a year of free parking at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, and two tickets to every concert at Boettcher Concert Hall in the upcoming season. That’s 51 concerts.

For folks who like considering the odds, the CSO says it will sell 4,999 chances. There’s a little deal available for high rollers. Spend $300 and you get five tickets, which drops the stake down to $60 a chance.

It’s hard to pin down actual calendar dates for the massive event to be known as the “Month of Photography” across the region. That makes sense when you realize that “MOP” is a coordinated effort featuring scores of galleries, museums, schools and individual artists.

Officially, it’s billed as “March-April” but a few places are getting a head start, exhibiting some amazing work.